6Thanks Giving DinnerAs every year the Propeller Club, Port of Piraeus in cooperation with the AmericanHellenic Chamber of Commerce organized a membership dinner to celebrate theThanksgiving Day.During the dinner our President Mr. Vlassis N. Katrantzos offered the followingThanksgiving prayer for all of us.1. 2.3.Your Excellency, Honourable guests, Ladies andGentlemen, could you please rise.Oh, Heavenly Father,We thank thee for food and remember thehungry.We thank thee for health and remember thesick.We thank thee for friends and remember thefriendless.We thank thee for freedom and remember theenslaved.May the spirit of Thanksgiving be shared by oneand all!!Have a wonderful Thanksgiving,and may God Bless you this Thanksgiving dayand always.Mr. Ambassador, please be kind enough andjoin me at the podium, to address your Greekfriends.1. <strong>The</strong> U.S. Ambassador Mr. Charles Parker Ries refering tothe backround of the Thanksgiving Day.2. <strong>The</strong> President of the Propeller Club Mr. Vlassis N.Katrantzos extending greetings to our members.3. Snapshot from the Thanksgiving Dinner.Thank you. Vlassis and Stefanos, SecretaryGeneral Skondras, ladies and gentlemen, HappyThanksgiving.It is my pleasure to join the Propeller Club andHellenic American Chamber of Commerce againthis year for your annual Thanksgiving Dinner.Last year’s dinner was my first and I recall sayingthat I felt like I was in Pilgrim, welcomed herein the “New World” of Greece, with the hospitality,great food and useful survival tips.As I stand before you tonight, I’m still amazedby this country’s wonderful hospitality, but afterdealing with the press for a year it suffices tosay that I occasionally feel less like the Pilgrimand more like the turkey.
the Propeller Club NewsletterI’d also like to be thankful for those who, as thePresident’s Thanksgiving message put it,“answer the universal call to serve somethinggreater than ourselves”. <strong>The</strong> President notedthat “we see this spirit every day in the millionsof volunteers” who bring “hope and healing tothose in need”. In that spirit I’d like to thank themembers of my Embassy staff and others in thecommunity who gave up part of last weekend tomake a Thanksgiving dinner for the lessprivilegedat “the Ark” shelter.Now we all know the basic outline of the storyof the first Thanksgiving. It usually goessomething like this: a group of religiousseparatists set out from England on a ship calledMayflower to find a place in the New Worldwhere they could practice Religion freely. <strong>The</strong>ylanded at Plymouth Rock in Massachusetts. <strong>The</strong>ywere welcomed warmly by Native Americanswho helped the pilgrims build a settlement, plantcorn, and make it through a tough first winter.One fine fall morning, they gathered their harvest,invited the Indians over, shot wild turkeys, ateand drank merrily, and then spent the day layingon a couch watching parades and Americanfootball on TV.While mostly true, that is not exactly how ithappened.For one thing, the parades came much later.For another thing, while it is true that many ofthe Pilgrims were religious separatists, severalof them were only traders with no connection to,or interest in, their religious counterparts.It’s hard to say for sure, but it’s possible that the onlything that kept the peace between the two groupswas that they were all subject to English law.However, when the Mayflower arrived in the NewWorld, the Pilgrims quickly realized the ship theyhad strayed off course and they were in unsettledterritory. This meant that they didn’t necessarilyhave to choose English law or meet their otherobligations any longer.This presented the Pilgrims with a difficult choice.Each group could risk facing the new world alone,or they could work together.Fortunately for America’s history, they decidedto work together. To guide them, they came upwith an agreement we call the MayflowerCompact. In this document, each of the settlersrenewed their allegiance to the King, but alsoagreed to be governed in the New World by aleader elected by the group.It is hard to overstate the importance of thismoment in history. In just one paragraph, thesettlers affirmed the ancient Greek ideal ofdemocracy and they also chose civil society overcivil strife, in effect, they founded a city-state.We can all be thankful that in the four centuriessince that time, individuals in the United States,Greece, and around the world, have made thesame choices.Indeed, this year voters in Greece and the UnitedStates demonstrated that our democracies arevibrant and healthy through free and fairelections. <strong>The</strong>se peaceful elections were anexample for the world around us.Another result of the Mayflower straying offcourse was that the Pilgrims found themselvesfar outnumbered by Native Americans andchallenged by the harsh New Englandenvironment.It quickly became clear to their leaders that theywould not survive without the friendship of thenearby tribes.Thus, after some initial stumbles, the Pilgrimsreached out to the Native Americans throughdiplomacy. <strong>The</strong>y established trade ties. <strong>The</strong>y paidfor corn that they had taken earlier. Finally, andperhaps most importantly, when an allied chiefwas unfair siege, they slowed their royalty bysending as much support as they could. In short,their diplomacy provided the security that theirnumbers could not.So when a bountiful harvest was collected nearlya year after their arrival, the settlers and theNative Americans did indeed join each other fora harvest feast, as we have tonight.I would guess that as the Pilgrims thought aboutthe year past and looked towards the future, theyknew there were many things to be thankful for,but their decisions to choose democracy anddiplomacy over other alternatives probablytopped the list.Tonight, as I reflect on the year past and yearahead, I would say no less.Now we home you’ll all join me in that other greatAmerican Thanksgiving tradition-eating untilsomeone has to roll you away from the table.Thank you very much. Stin iyea sas!